The
general consensus as a book club was the book was easy to read due to the
author’s easy style of writing. Deep
moral life issues are addressed in the book.
There are too many important issues in the story plot to give gravitas
to life changing events and actions and the moral issues of: Forgiveness; Guilt; Parenting; Marriage;
Infidelity; Secrecy; and ‘what if’ scenarios.
Comments from the
group
I enjoyed reading “The Husband’s Secret” and
the author hooked me into the story very quickly. Whilst searching for a
piece of the Berlin wall for her daughter, Cecelia finds a letter from her
husband with a note to read only after his death – what should she do?
What would you do? After reading it the lives of the three main
characters become inextricably linked. At first I thought there was too
much going on but very quickly got involved with each of the characters.
Cecelia is very organised and Tupperware stalwart – a pillar of the
community. Tess moves to the town after her husband and best friend say
they’ve fallen in love – her best friend is also her cousin and business
partner. Rachel is the school secretary and cannot come to terms with the
murder of her daughter almost twenty years previously – the person she is
convinced is the culprit is also a teacher at the school.
I
enjoyed the book and read it at a sedate pace due to the easy style of writing
and found it easy to read. I found I
would pick it up and put it down again and I did struggle to persevere
with it. (Ann)
The author writes well with an easy style of
writing, however, not as ‘meaty’ as Maya Angelou’s use of plot device in, ‘I know why the caged bird sings’ which held
gravitas. John-Paul’s character losing the letter containing a life changing
confession seemed out of character for John-Paul, who is organised and keeps
records of tax statements in the attic and it therefore did not seem likely that he would
have lost the letter. I would recommend the book as a holiday read. (Silja)
I
guessed the twist in the novel, it was a ticking bomb waiting to go off, and
felt cheated by the framing device of “what ifs”; it was disappointing in
comparison to the twist in, ‘Fingersmith’ by Sarah Waters which I thought was
clever. I did not feel the moral issue
worked, for example, a similar moral
issue in the ’Blue diary’ was good in comparison to the moral issues in ‘The Husbands
Secret’ and the writing was better. The novel keeps going back to incidents in the
past and I did not feel comfortable with the moral excusing of the murder. (April)
I did
not find the content at the beginning and end of the novel sensible, however,
the novel picked up in the middle where Cecilia ponders whether to read the
letter. Too much time is spent on the character of Cecilia and perhaps too much
is written about Cecelia and Tupperware.
I liked the twist at the end of the novel regarding the murder. I found
the novel similar to “Mountains Echo”. (Carey)
In ‘The
Husband’s Secret’, we meet a whole host of characters, all jam-packed into 437
pages. I read this book very quickly,
way ahead of the Book Club meeting held to discuss the book. I had to go back
to the book before the meeting to refresh my memory of what I had read as I could
not recall the characters, nor the details of the story – I enjoyed the read
but found it forgettable. I would recommend the book as a holiday read. (Sharon S)
During
the meeting we discussed in general, books read this year, and how the novels
selected for the club, challenge us to read genres outside our comfort
zone. A topic we return to time and
again in the book club is the question of, “would this book translate well to
film and would we prefer the book or film version of the novel or both
mediums?” The general consensus in the
book club was that the novel would work well as a TV series or film.
“The Husbands secret” would translate well to
a TV series as there are lots of characters with intertwined life stories and
not too in-depth, similar to the J.K. Rowling novel, ‘The Casual Vacancy’. (Silja)
I did
not get passed the first chapter of the book.
Some books lend themselves better to film and this may be the case with
‘The Husband’s Secret’, for example, I could read and watch, ‘The Green Mile’ or
‘Shawshank Redemption’. (Nick)
The response from the group to the question of whether we would have chosen to read John Paul's letter... the unanimous answer...
“Yes, we would have read it!”
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